By Briana Keenan
Correspondent
It’s almost 5 p.m. on a Wednesday. I just came back to my dorm room after a day of being in and out of meetings and am looking forward to some time to myself before my next one online. I sit at my desk and catch up on some work before then.
Well, only until I am greeted with a faint tapping noise coming from behind me.
It was pouring rain on campus that day, with winds so strong that my umbrella turned inside out multiple times as I was walking from building to building. A small amount of water had dripped into my room once before when it had rained, but I was not prepared for what I was about to find.
The first time water leaked into my room from the rain, I filed a work order. Maintenance came on the Monday after that weekend and looked at the spot with their flashlight. The worker looked outside, returned hours later and said that the issue “could not be fixed.”
Although it was annoying, I moved the side table that was under where the water was leaking, cleaned it up and moved my bed over to the right, away from the water.
This time, I was not greeted with a small drip of water in the same spot, but one directly behind my bed and another dripping directly onto my pillows.
Clearly, this issue had been occurring all day. Both of my pillowcases were soaked and stained yellow. One of my pillows was dry under the pillowcase, but the other was stained and needed to be washed. The water coming into my room this time was light brown, and although it didn’t have an odor, I was still very concerned.
After I called my mom for reassurance, I washed the pillow and pillowcases and placed rags in the places where it was still leaking, and after doing so, hopped onto my virtual meeting.
I took several pictures of the damage, but I did not file another work order. I felt helpless and didn’t think it was worth it because I assumed that I would get the same answer. My floor’s GroupMe even had messages with another room having the same issue.
That night, I placed my clean pillows on the other side of my bed and went to sleep with my head away from the dripping water.
When I woke up the next morning, I saw that the water stains dried a shade of darker brown on the wall and brown stains on some of the rags. I assumed that it would be raining on this day, too, since it had been raining all week, but I was greeted with the pleasant surprise of no rain nor any more leaking water into my room.
That being said, I think that this is still a large issue that needs to be addressed. My room is in the corner of the hallway on the ninth floor of Travers Hall, but I cannot imagine how many of the floors under me may be facing the same dilemma. The fact that the maintenance worker said that this was unfixable makes me beyond frustrated since the situation has worsened.
I am lucky that I can write about this for The Signal and hopefully bring more awareness to an issue that is occurring in the freshman dorms.
I do not know what the solution is to this problem, but I know that it needs to be addressed. Since the towers are the largest freshman dorm on campus, authorities need to ensure that it is in a habitable condition.
Dorms do not need to be luxurious — but they should at least keep their residents dry.
